


Slow Turn

by TheMockingCrows



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood and Gore, Infection, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 14:48:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8106436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMockingCrows/pseuds/TheMockingCrows
Summary: Monsters weren't supposed to be real. Yet the vicious, shambling creatures steadily changing their form were nothing short of the nightmares children were warned of growing up. Entire cities were lost in the first waves of sickness passing from person to person. When the dead began to rise, grey skinned and sprouting orange growths, vicious and hungry, everything fell apart.With Betas in Washington, caught in the crossfire during a visit, and the Alphas in Texas, the only plan that matters is to survive and, hopefully, meet up again in one piece.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr mirror: http://themockingcrows.tumblr.com/post/150748155237/slow-turn-ch-1

Breathe in.

 

Breathe out.

 

It was such a simple concept, but it took effort to do anymore. The last breaths at night were stressful and anxiety filled, while the first breaths in the morning were a relief and proof of surviving the night.

 

Breathe in.

 

Breathe out.

 

Keep calm and ignore the sounds in the house from the things that got in. The monsters. The boogeymen. The nightmares that he'd spent so long being told were just in his head, weren't real. It being daylight didn't matter against anything already in the house, wouldn't slow them at all.

 

Breathe in.

 

John exhaled slowly to keep himself calm and quiet in the empty bathtub he'd spent the night in, backpack down between his knees and full of supplies both old and new. The most recent score had been two large bottles of aspirin and a bottle of rubbing alcohol, but the biggest find was a few cans of ravioli and an axe that seemed sharp enough. He ran a thumb along the edge, just gently enough to tell that it.. wasn't as sharp as he'd thought it was yesterday before barricading in. Damn it.

 

Oh well, Dave would be able to sharpen it surely. If not him then, really, how hard would it be to sharpen the stupid thing? Couldn't be THAT hard, just needed some Egbert brand elbow grease slathered liberally onto it.

 

A low hiss came from somewhere outside the locked and blocked door, trailing scratching sounds and quick footsteps further down the hall, turning John's blood to ice in his veins. It was so bright outside, he'd be safer soon as he got outside, these fuckers hated light and hesitated before launching out in it, it'd buy him time to get back to the road and get moving back to the 'base' they had that moved every so often on this damned trip. Just.. needed to be quiet till then. Needed to not draw the attention of however many of those things were lurching around inside.  
  
Slowly, he pushed himself to sit upright and ran a hand through his hair, adjusted his glasses and reached for the weapon he had come in with, one that didn't need to be sharpened or honed so long as it hadn't fallen apart physically yet. Nothing said Drop Dead quite like a sledgehammer with a good long grip to cut back on splatter with.

 

John's bag crinkled a little, made him glance towards the door cautiously every step of putting it on. The soft _shunk_ of the window latch made him flinch as it and the subsequent scritching and scratching of trying to push its painted over confines up made it worse. It wasn't going to open. Short of breaking the glass out and hoping he A. subsequently got out fast enough afterward and B. didn't slice himself ten ways from Tuesday, John's mind was racing wildly on how the fuck else to get out. The bathroom was a secure enough space last night when he locked the door up and shoved the sturdy feeling linen cabinet in front of the whole setup, but it didn't feel like nearly enough now that he would need to make such loud noise.

 

Creeping away with the dawn was the plan, and one that'd worked fairly well in the past, but this would not be creeping any such place. This would be loud smashing and jumping, praying to whatever acrobatic gods there were to guide his feet and then running like his ass was on fire and the rest was watching.

 

Breathe in.

 

The door thumped twice, loud, testing whuds that rattled the door frame and ruined the steady breathing pattern John had managed to trick himself into just moments before. The slow breaths turned jerky and panicky as the adrenaline kicked up, arms straining and fingers cramping as he fought with the window. They were outside that door. They knew. They had to know. Those things weren't curious unless they were after something, and a solidly locked door was not an invitation without a tasty prize terrified on the other side.

 

Another hit. Then another. The hissing, scratching noise was coming back up the hall to focus on the door, three distinct sets of hammering joining the first clumsy whuds and steadily growing more violent.

 

They knew.

 

Christ, they knew, they knew he was in here, knew SOMETHING was in here, knew something was cornered and alive and ready to be devoured and he couldn't rattle the fucking window hard enough now that his cover was blown anyway. It wasn't going to open. It just wasn't, even with the beginning flakes and peel, the outside edges were painted shut by some sloppy son of a bitch who'd just wanted their house to look nice in one go instead of following up to make it functional again. He'd have to break it and run, hope the noise didn't pique interest from across the road and draw others closer. John didn't want to know precisely how many of these monsters there were anymore. Jade had made guesses to entire city populations, Dirk had agreed before contact was lost, and John very much wanted to duck his head and pretend this was all a nightmare again.

 

Nightmares couldn't hurt you, his father had said so, and it used to be a comforting fact.

 

Then the nightmares had taken his father away, leaving him a dead eyed shambling beast that was slowly, steadily, turning into exactly what the others were. Would his skin be all gray by now? Would he have developed the growths as well, or would he have already died entirely between the stage of losing himself and becoming one of these monsters? John felt he should have taken the time to locate his father and put him down personally instead of being left not knowing what really happened anymore. At least if he was entirely gone, there'd be no more questions lingering in the back of John's mind, no 'what if' lingering when he couldn't sleep at night.

 

… though. Really, who knew if he'd really be able to do it. To look him in the yellowing eyes and swing that hammer down instead of lean in for one last hug and wait to not care anymore about how awful things were.

 

The hissing grew worse and the thuds louder, hard enough to jostle the linen cabinet where it stood. John started to make a quiet sound of panic before smashing his face against the glass, trying to look down and judge where he'd be going from the roofs edge. Wrong move and that drop could easily break his leg, break an arm, break his neck if the fall was bad enough. He'd need to get out and go to the side, aim for the bushes to hop down from. The yard was clear and he couldn't see any other shambling forms just beyond the brightest lights, so the time to act was now. Taking a deep breath to stop the panic before it could get worse, John pulled the hammer back to the side and cracked it into the window. A second strike was made to knock the larger shards of glass away as the attacks on the door got more and more intense, eagerly ripping at it, trying to rip the lock out of equation entirely to get at the living flesh within. A third strike as the door finally gave behind the cabinet, and John's panicky sound became a miserable, wordless drone of terror.

 

Good enough.

 

The sight of gray arms and sharp claws reaching past the debris, the flashes of orange, of wild yellow eyes was too much. John strangled out a scream that was already halfway out of his throat, steeled himself, and stuffed his gangly limbed self out onto the rooftop, shoes skidding on some of the slivers of glass before he could get himself some traction. They broke through the last of the barricade by the time John was hurriedly making his way along the slanted edge of the roof, trying to line himself up with the bushes. They weren't smart enough to go back and hurry downstairs to come get him, not smart enough in this state to plan that far ahead, so two of the half turned creatures were climbing out after John. One immediately slipped on the glass and fell from the roof with a sickening crack, its arm snapping back in an unnatural position and preventing it from getting up very readily.

 

John rode the desperate high as he hopped off the roof and into the bushes with his hammer in hand, grunting at the impact, and scrambling to get his feet underneath him so he could run to the bike he'd brought here. Silent, fairly fast compared to walking or running, could carry more weight back, or be ditched entirely in favor of fleeing on foot? It was no wonder that all four of them had a habit of finding bikes in every new place they were forced to stop in.

 

Chest tight, John heard the thudding of feet behind him, thankful they weren't incredibly fast and just determined, and hurriedly got himself situated on the seat. A few pumps of his legs got a bit of speed going, enough that he could stand up and sink his weight into each pedal to go faster, accelerating while everything was flat and fairly clear to prepare for the coming hills that separated this neighborhood from the latest safe spot that the others should be at waiting for him to return to so the next could go out for supplies and he could rest.

 

The screaming, agitated hissing of monsters in sunlight rang in John's ears as the others in the area became aware of him and tried to follow, unable to do so easily, eyes burning and obstructing progress. He heard the hissing give way to the rush of wind in his ears and the comfort of speed and a fairly clear road.

 

He stopped panting at the top of the first big hill, and slowly tried to return to the pattern he'd had before.

 

Breathe in.

 

…...

 

Breathe out.

 


End file.
